- What Materials Do You Need for TOEFL Listening? -
For Exam Prep Only: The Essential Four-Piece Set
Official Guide
TPO Practice Software
Categorized Vocabulary Book
Older TOEFL Listening Materials
With these four, if you thoroughly understand every listening passage, you won't need any other materials.
- If You Want to Improve Your English Through TOEFL Prep -
1.60 seconds
This program covers various scientific topics and is comparable in difficulty to TOEFL materials, making it suitable for daily listening practice. We'll have related resources for you at the end of the article—don't miss out!
2.VOA
VOA, The Economist, and similar resources are well-known for improving English listening. However, if your English level isn't yet sufficient to understand VOA, or if you're not interested in the topics, don't force it.
3. If You Want to Relax
Discovery series, the science section on Bilibili, and various science documentaries—subtitled short videos on popular science are similar to TOEFL content. Watch them in your spare time to refresh your mind!
- What Does the Listening Section Really Test? -
Apparent Purpose
All conversations and lectures are designed to assess whether you can handle classroom and daily communication in college.
Real Purpose
It's not just about understanding the content, but whether you grasp the speakers' intentions and the lecture's logical structure.
- Tips to Improve TOEFL Listening -
1. Dictation
Dictation is not a one-step process. Our goal is to write down every word of every sentence completely and correctly, so repeated listening and corrections are necessary:
1) Listen to the entire passage once or twice.
The first listen is to understand the full content and grasp the main idea. Aside from conversations, TOEFL listening materials are often somewhat academic lectures, so comprehending the overall meaning and logical structure is key to doing well.
2) Transcribe sentence by sentence.
Generally, you can listen to one sentence, pause, write it down, and then move to the next. If you encounter something you don't understand or are unsure about, you can go back and listen again.
3) Check against the original text.
Reviewing your transcript is extremely important! Compare with the original, use a red pen to correct mistakes, and identify your weaknesses: whether it's difficulty distinguishing sounds, comprehension errors, or spelling mistakes.
2. Note-taking
During the exam, always trust your notes over other sources. Actively understand and remember the information you hear, clarify the relationships between key points, and listen with an analytical mind. With enough practice, you can even predict what's coming next! This approach greatly increases the amount of information you retain, because it's already logically organized in your head.
Ultimate Note-Taking Tips :
Comprehension accounts for 70%, notes for 30%. If you only listen without noting, you can't guarantee that 70%; if you furiously take notes without listening, you'll lose even the 30%.
Develop your own note-taking system. Use abbreviations and symbols; the more concise your notes, the better.
Take notes vertically. Force a line break when you detect a clear shift in meaning. Use indentation to show structure, with main ideas in larger text or marked with asterisks. Use logical arrows to indicate paragraph relationships—structure must be clear.
In conversations, focus on: questions, requests, suggestions, and changes in tone.
In lectures, focus on: logical connectors, emphasized content, contrasting points, and student-teacher dialogues.
Note key words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and negatives.
Don't write down proper nouns or use abbreviations. Since explanations follow, abbreviate names.
Practice regularly and analyze which information is important and which is redundant filler.
Use 1.3x speed for final exam prep. That way, the normal-speed listening on test day will sound like slow English!
3. Extensive Listening
In regular practice, besides intensive listening, some extensive listening is also very beneficial. It helps you "tune your ears" in a more relaxed state. But "relaxed" here doesn't mean not paying attention or letting it go in one ear and out the other. You still need to actively understand the material.
Simply put, listening to news or shows in your free time, without focusing on every word but just grasping the gist, is extensive listening. Extensive listening helps improve your language feel; before you know it, you'll develop a familiarity and comfort with English sounds. The progress is subtle, but over time you'll see noticeable improvement!
- Listening Q&A -
1. I'm too weak in basics—I just can't understand. What should I do?
Start with the fundamentals and think long-term. Any prep tip claiming "you can get questions right without understanding anything" is nonsense. If you don't understand more than 60%, there are almost no tricks that work.
2. I don't understand the vocabulary, and the sentences are too difficult. What should I do?
Step 1: Strengthen vocabulary and grammar, the cornerstones of English.
Step 2: Consciously build your listening-oriented academic vocabulary. You only need to understand it when hearing or reading, not necessarily use it. To familiarize yourself with pronunciation, record yourself reading new words and then do dictation based on your recordings. When analyzing complex sentences, key information often lies in nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
3. I understand bits and pieces, but listening feels like "Today's lecture is about @¥％&@＃Earth's surface!" What should I do?
Step 1: Find materials at your level for intensive listening.
Step 2: Shadow—mimic English pronunciation and rhythm, paying attention to sound distinctions. (Was the problem unfamiliar vocabulary or a change in sound?)
Step 3: Intensive listening plus dictation is the foundation of listening practice. The goals of dictation are:
1. First, transcribe the important information you can hear in sentences.
2. Dictate key words.
3. Produce concise notes.
4. I can understand, but I still can't grasp the passage and keep getting questions wrong. What should I do?
Step 1: Listen to the full passage twice while taking notes, grasping the main idea.
Step 2: Answer the questions (don't check the answers yet).
Step 3: Based on your notes, divide the passage into paragraphs, read the original text, identify logical markers, and summarize each paragraph's main idea.
Step 4: Locate the testing points in the passage according to the questions.
Step 5: Analyze the options, then check your answers.
Step 6: Shadow, check unfamiliar words, and clarify grammar.
There are no shortcuts to language improvement (well, one shortcut: diligence is the path up the mountain of books). The four skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—require hard work; without determined practice, there's no real progress. The biggest shortcut to improvement is effort. Keep it up, students!
